An evangelical church worker in Texas was arrested by local police after being accused of impersonating an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent to extort money from a woman.
Donald Doolittle, director of security at the evangelical Gateway Community Church in Webster, a Houston suburb, faces charges of impersonating a public servant, police told local station KTRK on Monday.
Authorities indicated that Donald Doolittle hired the services of the woman, a massage therapist in the northwest part of the city.
When it was time to pay her, the 58-year-old man said he wanted to pay her by credit card, but she informed him that she only received cash or wire transfer through the Zelle app.
Donald Doolittle, in response, told the woman that he was an ICE agent, showed her an identification card with the agency’s logo and asked to see her documents.
The woman showed him that she had a temporary visa and he insisted that she had to give him $500, or else he would “arrest her and she would never see her family or children again,” the website reported.
The victim, further details of whom are unknown at this time, sent him the money.
Donald Doolittle asked her to delete the messages and told her that her “case” had been closed.
The exchange between the two came to light and an investigation was opened, because the victim told what happened to some police officers she happened to meet the next day at lunch.
The defendant, who remains in custody on $10,000 bail, denied the facts.
Donald Doolittle’s case is part of a wave of dozens of cases across the country where ordinary citizens are posing as ICE agents.
In some situations to abuse or kidnap Latinos or migrants, taking advantage of the high presence of these officers in different regions and the fact that they have begun to cover their faces with ski masks when carrying out operations or arrests.
The number of incidents has reached such a point that the FBI issued a circular requesting ICE to instruct its agents to “properly identify themselves”.
“Due to the recent increase in ICE enforcement actions across the country, criminal actors are taking advantage of ICE’s increased public presence and media coverage to target vulnerable communities and commit criminal activity,” the FBI wrote.
“This not only affects victims and communities, but also has broader negative consequences for law enforcement agencies,” continued the statement, released in October and made public in early November by the NGO Property of the People.
With information from EFE
